American Experience: The Vote

Honoring the 100 ^th anniversary of the passage of the 19 ^th Amendment of women’s suffrage, “ The Vote ” tells the dramatic story of the epic and surprisingly unfamiliar crusade waged by American women for the right to vote. Focusing primarily on the movement’s final decade, the film charts American women’s determined march to the ballot box, and illuminates the myriad social, political and cultural obstacles that stood in their path.

The series features the voices of unsung warriors of the movement: Mae Whitman voices Alice Paul, Audra McDonald voices Ida B. Wells, Laura Linney voices Carrie Chapman Catt and Patricia Clarkson voices Harriot Stanton Blatch.

Ida B. Wells was an early leader in the civil rights movement and was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She also became very involved in the women’s suffrage movement and established several notable women’s organizations. She was arguably the most famous black woman in America at that time. Harriot Stanton Blatch was the daughter of women’s rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton and later championed by Alice Paul , a well-educated singularly-driven Quarter of the movement’s third generation which used the new, “unladylike” tactics that heightened the movement’s visibility as thousands of American women took to the streets to boldly demand their right to full and equal citizenship. Suffragists decided in 1915 to concentrate their energy on the passage of a federal amendment. One faction of the suffragists, the National American Woman Suffrage Association led by President Carrie Chapman Catt, was determined to pursue a moderate course of action by working within the political system. While another, Alice Paul’s National Women’s Party, deployed more confrontational and controversial methods of practice. 

My Thoughts

Women went through so such get the right to vote. The picketing, the arrests, the postcards, the lobbying, the arguing, the force feedings, the constant disappointments. This documentary touches on all that the suffragettes endured so woman would vote today.  I think of women like Alice Paul, the Pankhurst family, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and all they went through and I realize how much I value my right to vote and how I won't waste it, even if I don't like the candidates. 

The Vote reveals just the tip of the iceberg of what some of the women went through to obtain the vote. America and many other countries have fought he same battle. Watch it, imagine yourself in these women's shoes, and then get out there and vote this November.  If you want to grab a copy of this amazing DVD for your library,  you can find them in stores nationwide, at PBS.org, or on Amazon.